Tuesday, September 2, 2014

The punditry vs. the presidency - NY Daily News

Sarah Palin has a point about the lamestream media. Unfortunately her best friends and sometime employer are the worst offenders. It is a disease that she may have gotten on her own, but John McCain is a likely source of the infection. Get tough is always the message - without any real calculation of what it would cost or produce.

Michael Cohen points out the shallowness of the recent ISIS hysteria.The rise of ISIS is terrifying, but far more for the people of Iraq and Syria than for Americans. It's true, albeit a minute possibility, that ISIS could establish a safe haven in the territory they hold, train some terrorists and send them to attack the United States.

But it's hard to be concerned over such a remote event, especially when Americans face serious actual challenges at home - like the constant drumbeat of senseless gun violence that takes the lives of an estimated 30,000 Americans every year.- GWC

The punditry vs. the presidency - NY Daily News:
by Michael Cohen
"There is a fun foreign policy game making all the rounds in Washington D.C. this summer: Pin the tail on Barack Obama.
Its appeal is not hard to understand; it's so easy to play.
Step 1: Pick a foreign crisis that touches even slightly on U.S. national security interests. This shouldn't be hard, because the United States defines practically everything in the world as being an American interest.
Step 2: Make clear that this is no garden-variety problem but rather "the defining crisis of [OBAMA'S] presidency," or a threat to the "very foundations of global order" or the answer to the question, "is this how World War III begins."
Step 3: Bemoan the lack of "leadership," "strategy," "attention" or "fortitude" from the commander in chief. Note that the President is "weirdly detached" and "emotionally disengaged" (bonus points for a Churchill reference).
Make corny jokes about how Obama's focus on golf is "turning into 'a real handicap.'" Ask snarky questions like "what would it look like if America actually had a Middle East strategy" that wasn't defined by "inaction" and the lack of a "clear vision." Even suggest that if only a Russian strongman were running America, those terrorists would finally get their due.
Step 4: Insist that everything would be better if something had been done differently a few years ago (bonus points if you made that suggestion at the time)."